Theresa May names first cabinet

The new prime minister has been filling posts in her first cabinet and, significantly, has placed Brexit-backing MPs in positions that will be central to the EU withdrawal negotiations. Boris Johnson is the new foreign secretary, David Davis is the Brexit minister and Liam Fox’s career has seen a remarkable revival with his appointment as international trade secretary.

May has not been reluctant to remove big beasts from their jobs. Michael Gove was sacked, as were George Osborne, Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan, among others.

She also gave jobs to her former leadership rival Andrea Leadsom and one of her earliest backers Chris Grayling.

There was speculation that May would appoint more women and, while the numbers are more representative than under David Cameron, they are still disproportionate. The same goes for the ratio of state to privately educated cabinet ministers.

We have a final ministerial appointment of the day. Ben Gummer, formerly a junior health minister (and the son of Thatcher and Major era cabinet member John Gummer) is now minister for the Cabinet Office, Downing Street has announced.

“There will be no further ministerial appointments this evening,” the statement adds. There are, of course, a whole series of junior posts still to fill or shuffle.

Theresa May’s official spokeswoman said today’s appointments revealed a “bold” cabinet, and “what we’re seeing is the commitment of the prime minister to putting social reform at the heart of her government.”

Barack Obama has already called May to congratulate her, the spokeswoman also revealed. The pair spoke for 15 minutes, during which they discussed security cooperation, and she “underlined the point that the decision to leave the European Union means that”.

It remains unclear whether May actually used what has already become her catchphrase: “Brexit means Brexit”.

With Labour’s leadership so far silent on the ministerial changes, the SNP’s Westminster Leader, Angus Robertson, has called it “one of the most right-wing cabinets in the modern era”. He said in a statement:

From Boris Johnson as our foreign secretary – a man who will now be representing us on the world stage – to David Davis as Brexit minister and Liam Fox for trade, it will be Brexiteers who are taking forward UK foreign policy.

We also have Jeremy Hunt being re-appointed as health secretary, despite the ongoing disputes with junior doctors, and Priti Patel as minister for international sevelopment, despite previously calling for the department to be abolished.

The news that the department for energy and climate change is being merged with business, innovation and skills, is also particularly worrying given the current challenges facing the energy sector.

Green campaigners were divided over the likely impact of the abolition of the department of energy and climate change, with some saying that folding its responsibilities into the new department for business, energy and industrial strategy would downgrade the importance of climate change and take ministerial attention away from the issue for the next parliament.

Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, said he was “shocked” by the move.

“Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face. This week the government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.

“If Theresa May supports strong action on climate change, as she’s previously said, it’s essential that this is made a top priority for the new business and energy department and across government.”

But WWF struck a more conciliatory note. “The new department for business, energy, and industrial strategy can be a real powerhouse for change, joining up Whitehall teams to progress the resilient, sustainable, and low carbon infrastructure that we urgently need,” said David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF-UK.

“Climate change must be hard-wired into the new department of business, energy and industrial strategy and our economy need climate change to be at its very heart.”

However, critics were concerned that the loss of the term climate change in the new department’s title was a signal of the lack of importance the new cabinet and prime minister placed on the issue.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said: “Although, some might say, ‘What’s in a name?’ there is a very real worry that the progress made on tackling climate change could be relegated to the bottom of the in tray. Business, energy and industrial strategy must have green innovation and job creation at its heart.”

This is Peter Walker, taking over from Andrew for a bit. My colleague Rowena Mason has made this tally of the gender split of the cabinet as it appears so far. She also calculates that five of 23 cabinet ministers were privately educated, fewer than in David Cameron’s cabinet, but still a proportion three times above the 7% figure for the country as a whole.

Rowena Mason (@rowenamason)

Final tally 8 women out of 23 in cabinet including the PM (34%) - slightly higher than Cameron's 7/ 22 (but not really a march of the women)

Summary

Andrew Sparrow

Theresa May has virtually finished appointing her first cabinet. As I write, the full list has not yet been published, but all the key appointments are known. See here. The reshuffle has gone much further than expected. I was going to write a “what we’ve learnt” analysis, but it is hard to improve on the eight points identified by Robert Peston. (See 4.46pm.) The last 24 hours have revealed aspects of May’s character that were perhaps under-appreciated. She has proved more ruthless than people expected, sacking senior figures who are well regarded by some Tories, like George Osborne and Michael Gove, without compunction. And she has shown more willingness to take risks than people would have predicted, appointing Boris Johnson to the Foreign Office, but also putting some very inexperienced people (like Gavin Williamson and Natalie Evans) into senior roles. The new cabinet looks less public school and more meritocratic than the last one. It also looks more rightwing, although that may be a consequence of the need to appoint Brexiteers, and the overlap that seems to exist between strong Euroscepticism and low tax, low regulation Toryism.